Heat recovery is the process by which a part of the heat that is lost from a thermal process is utilized. The recovery is done by means of a heat exchange between waste hot streams (e.g. exhaust gas, hot waste products of industrial processes) and the cold streams which we want to warm up.

Heat generation systems always release waste heat. Although heat losses exist in any production process, it is very important to properly estimate the size and the involved costs in order to decide whether it is rational to invest in a waste heat recovery project or not.

The basic idea of process integration is the optimization of the processes as a whole system, without taking into account the optimization of each process separately.

Process integration is a design method which is used for the energy performance maximization in industrial processes. The method involves the connection of the hot and cold streams of the processes in a thermodynamically optimal way. Therefore it is possible to redesign the flows of several streams, so as to cover heating and cooling loads in the most efficient and most economical way.